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About 75 percent of China’s total energy consumption and 80 percent of its electricity production come from coal.

The Shengli open-cast coal mine in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia, encroaches on the grassland. Ten billion cubic meters of water will be consumed by 16 new coal fired power plants and mines in China in 2015, triggering severe water crises in the country’s arid Northwest. (14 Aug, 2012). Image and Caption: Lu Guang/Greenpeace

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Other Global Disasters/ Significant Events

Avian Flu H7N9 Virus in China: 63 Infected, 14 Dead

Another fatality and 3 additional infections from H7N9 bird flu virus has been reported in China on Monday, bringing the nationwide death toll to 14, and the number of infections to 63.

A woman died from H7N9 virus infection in east China’s Jiangsu Province on Sunday after emergency treatments failed, said a report quoting the provincial health authorities.

Of a total of 63 cases of H7N9 infections so far reported across China, 24 are in Shanghai, 17 in Jiangsu, 16 in Zhejiang, three in Anhui, two in Henan and one in Beijing, the report said.

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Massive wildfire breaks out in E China forest

Authorities have deployed 700 firefighters to put out a large forest fire in east China’s Jiangxi Province, according to a report.

The fire broke out in the Dexing City mountains at 3:00 pm local time on Monday, April 15, and was uncontained as of posting. The fire started after one or more persons torched wild grass to clear the land for planting, according to the report.

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Deadly Explosions Rock Boston Marathon

At least three people have been killed and more than 130 injured, some critically, after two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon ripped through the crowd.

“Any event with multiple explosive devices – as this appears to be – is clearly an act of terror, and will be approached as an act of terror,” a White House official has said.

The carnage took place despite 10 years and more than $20 trillion in military expenditure to fight the “war on terror.”

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Bomb attacks across Iraq kill at least 55, injure more than 300

A series of attacks across Iraq has killed at least 55 people and injured more than 300 on Monday, according to reports.

“Monday’s violence marked Iraq’s deadliest day since March 19, the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, when a wave of bombings killed 65 across the country.” AP reported.

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DISASTER CALENDAR – April 16, 2013—SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,061 Days Left

Mass die-offs resulting from human impact and the planetary response to the anthropogenic assault could occur by early 2016.

SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,061 Days Left to ‘Worst Day’ in the brief Human History

**PLEASE FORWARD THIS INVITATION OUT ON ALL LISTSERVS, MYSPACES … —EVERYWHERE!!**

THE APPALACHIAN BIOREGION NEEDS YOU!

MOUNTAIN JUSTICE SUMMER 2009 CAMP OUT MAY 16 – 22

HEARWOOD REGIONAL CAMP 2009 MAY 22 – 25

COAL IS DIRTY, DANGEROUS AND DEPLETING!

Y’all are formally invited to the 5th annual Mountain Justice Summer camp where activist and organizers come from all over to learn, educate, refresh and party to celebrate a summer of resistance to the pernicious process know as strip mining.

Join us! at this years camp in beautiful Harlan County Kentucky at Camp Blanton. You will be surrounded by old growth forest—and the heart of the resistance movement against the destruction of the magnificent ancient majestic mountains which surround you.

The end of the Mountain Justice camp kicks off the start of the Annual Heartwood Forest Council Camp May 22-25th. After a week of learning how to defend the most ancient mountains in the world stay and at the same place learn about defense of its forest!

Join us! as this camp kicks off the now annual summer campaign of resistance in the Appalachia bioregion to protect some of the oldest watersheds on earth. Come join us as we celebrate 5 years of continuous non stop resistance to the forces that would lay waste to our land and the people which belong to it.

Join us as we seek to take advantage of the changing political climate to create the pressure and visible resistance that will make it possible to capitalize on that climate.

After 5 years of resistance Mountain Justice now is at the cusp of making gains dreamed of during the darkest days of the Bush presidency. Now the agency heads are no longer from the industry they are supposed to regulate. Now agencies are being captured back from the industries that owned them up to now. Now is the time for us to take back the losses of the Bush years.

We are going to stop strip mining for coal with YOUR HELP. Come and help us forge a new energy future. Coal is a 19th century technology that hired a 20th century PR firm but this year we will rock the national with the truth that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN COAL!

Our planet is tied to the same crossroads as our species. As climate change becomes more damaging, as we gasp in cities dying deaths of slow asphyxiation from coal pollution as and entire community is wiped out by the toxic ash byproduct of this 19th century technology now is when we weigh in and make our choice.

Help us forge a new energy policy for our mountains, the planet the people which inhabit it. Now is the time, distance, speed and place where if we push back hard enough we can not only take back what was done during the Bush years—we can push forward into a new cleaner future.

Coal is dirty, dangerous and depleting is our message. Come join us to play, sing, learn and prepare to make a new path for our species. We need you now more than ever before because now is the time. We need writers, filmers, teachers, lawyers, artist, fishermen, 4 wheeler enthusiasts. If you have any skill—and are willing to work hard for the mountains of Appalachia we need you!

Help us preserve the most valuable resource of all—our highland watersheds. If you think the wars for oil are bloody—wait till you see the wars for water. Appalachia is the Saudi Arabia of WATER and it is that resource which the future is going to be most grateful when we end strip mining and the resulting annihilation of highland watersheds.

Please come prepared to camp—more importantly come with respect and a willingness to learn and work. We have fun—but this camp is a huge tool in the resistance and it’s a tool we need to do what its designed for—making strip mine corporations a living hell. We need people that are autonomous and can take care of themselves. You are coming into the Appalachian Mountains with a distinct culture which you will do fine with if you just come with respect.

If your even curious goto our website at mountainjustice.org and see what we are about. At the very least at the end of the week you will leave with new friendships, new knowledge and perhaps some new skills to help in the fight.

So join us! Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Aunts and Uncles students and teachers. We need an entire broad range of experience and have everything ranging from tent space to comfortable indoor lodge space and a massive kitchen. You will be comfortable, well fed, entertained and will walk away with an entire skill set.

Coal is good for you! Don’t let a mountain or two stand in your way!

Mountaintop removal near Hazard (Perry County, KY). Image may be subject to copyright.

In West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and eastern Kentucky, coal companies blast as much as 600 feet off the top of the mountains, then dump the rock and debris into mountain streams.

Over 300,000 acres of the most beautiful and productive hardwood forests in America have already been turned into barren grasslands. Mountaintop removal mining increases flooding, contaminates drinking water supplies, cracks foundations of nearby homes, and showers towns with dust and noise from blasting. (Photo and Caption:The Mountaintop Removal Road Show).

Even the average high school grad could have made an educated guess …

About one third of the world’s annual emissions of CO2 is absorbed by the surface of the oceans forming carbonic acid (ancient name acid of air or aerial acid), H2CO3, which is increasing the acidity of the oceans to as much as 7.7 pH in some areas off the California coast. [Pre-industrial (1700s) ocean pH: 8.179]

“We were completely surprised because people had been looking at the effect of acidification on calcified structures of marine animals, but there was no evidence to suggest it was affecting non-calcified structures, like a sperm or an egg,” lead-scientist Jane Williamson from Macquarie University told Reuters on Friday.

“It is widely believed that seawater is chemically well-buffered, but these results show that the acidification process already well underway may threaten the viability of many marine species,” Williamson said.

The sea urchins study found a link between increased ocean acidity and a reduction in fertility (Credit: ABC News). Image may be subject to copyright!

“What we have now is evidence that the world’s marine life is far more sensitive to ocean acidification than first suspected, and that means our oceans may be very different places in the not-too-distant future.”

Up to 410 dead zones with a combined area of about 250,000km² and counting!

Summertime satellite observations of ocean color from MODIS/Aqua show highly turbid waters which may include large blooms of phytoplankton extending from the mouth of the Mississippi River all the way to the Texas coast. When these blooms die and sink to the bottom, bacterial decomposition strips oxygen from the surrounding water, creating an environment very difficult for marine life to survive in. Reds and oranges represent high concentrations of phytoplankton and river sediment. Image taken by NASA and provided courtesy of the NASA Mississippi Dead Zone web site.

No of Dead Zones

1970: 40 dead zones

1980: 65

1990: 135

2000: 305

2008: 410 dead zones with a combined area of about 250,000km²

“The biggest one measures about 30,000 square miles in the Baltic Sea, the researchers said. This is followed in size by one in the Gulf of Mexico starting at the mouth of the Mississippi River in the United States and one at the mouth of China’s Yangtze River in the East China Sea.” Reuters reported.

“It’s not sort of a local or regional problem, which is how it was thought of in the past,” said Robert Diaz of the College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “It is actually a global problem.”

“Most of it is agricultural-based, but there is a lot of industrial nitrogen in there, too, if you consider electric generation industrial,” added Diaz.

Too Little, Too Late?

Longleaf Energy Resources Leaves Court with a Red-Coal Face

A Georgia state court invalidated a permit to build a 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Early county, citing the developers’ failure to limit emissions of carbon dioxide. A Fulton County Superior Court Judge, Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore [kudos to judge Moore], reversed a right to pollute permit [aka, air permit] issued earlier this year by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to Longleaf Energy Resources.

Southern Company’s Plant Bowen in Cartersville, Georgia is seen in this aerial photograph in Cartersville in this file photo taken September 4, 2007. One of the biggest coal-fired plants in the country, it generates about 3,300 megawatts of electricity from four coal-fired boilers. (Chris Baltimore/Reuters; caption: abc News. Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice!

The judge citied a 2007 U.S. Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore decision in which carbon dioxide was ruled to be a pollutant under the existing Clean Air Act and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Anthracite Coal. Credit USGS

How much coal would it take to light a 100W light bulb for one year?

Energy density

The energy density of coal, expressed in kilowatt-hours per kilogram, is about 6.67 kWh/kg. The typical thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about 30%. That means only 30% of the coal burned up turns into electricity, with the rest is normally wasted as heat. Coal power plants generate approximately 2.0 kWh per kg of burned coal.

876 kWh ÷ 2kWh/kg = 438 kg of coal

However, the above amount does not take into account a further 5–10% transmission and distribution losses caused by resistance and heating in the power lines AND the initial energy used to mine the coal and ship it to the power plant, which could be equivalent to 10-15% of the total coal consumed.

438 kg ÷ 80% = 547.5 kg of coal {Total amount of coal consumed to light a 100W bulb for one full year!}

How Much Carbon Dioxide?

Carbon dioxide (CO2) forms during coal combustion when one atom of carbon (C) combines with two atoms of oxygen (O2). Carbon has an atomic weight of is 12, and oxygen 16, making the atomic weight of carbon dioxide 44. A kg of coal with a carbon content of 78 percent and a heating value of 32 MJ/kg emits about 2.86 of carbon dioxide. (Source: Carbon Dioxide Emission Factors for Coal)

[Note: other nasty byproducts include sulfur, which reacts with oxygen to produce SO2, which then combines with moisture in the air to produce acid rain, nitrogen oxides, NOx, and mercury, all of which are extremely harmful to air, water, soil, trees, marine animals and humans.]

Meanwhile, back in Crawford ranch …

White House officials, congressional staff revealed, refused to open e-mail from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, that said climate-warming greenhouse emissions threaten public health and welfare!

The EPA has also told members of Congress that the Defense Department is defying orders over cleaning up toxic pollution at three military bases at Fort Meade in Maryland, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.

Wild Facts Series: Just when you thought the oceans were dying painlessly!

Carbon Emissions Make Oceans Corrosive!

‘Acidified’ Water Threatens Marine Life on the Continental Shelf from Canada to Mexico: NOAA

Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico last summer. The ocean water on the western North American continental shelf was previously thought not to be “acidified.”

“Ocean acidification” is caused by the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, a process which makes water corrosive.

“Acidification of the Earth’s ocean water could have far-reaching impacts on the health of our near-shore environment, and on the sustainability of ecosystems that support human populations through nourishment and jobs,” said Richard W. Spinrad, NOAA assistant administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research. “This research is vital to understanding the processes within the ocean, as well as the consequences of a carbon-rich atmosphere.”

“Our findings represent the first evidence that a large section of the North American continental shelf is seasonally impacted by ocean acidification,” said Feely. “This means that ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our continental shelf right now.”

“While this absorption provides a great service to humans by significantly reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and decreasing the effects of global warming, the change in the ocean chemistry affects marine life, particularly organisms with calcium carbonate shells, such as corals, mussels, mollusks, and small creatures in the early stages of the food chain,” said Feely.

NOAA said: “Previous studies found ocean acidification at deeper depths farther from shore. The researchers said that the movement of the corrosive water appears to happen during the upwhelling season during the spring and summer, when winds bring CO2 -rich water up from depths of about 400-600 feet onto the continental shelf. The water that upwells off of the North American Pacific coast has been away from the surface for about 50 years.

“The field study collected samples from Queen Charlotte Sound, Canada, to San Gregorio Baja California Sur, Mexico. The closest they found corrosive water was about four miles off of the northern California coast.”

“We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century,” said Sabine. “Because of this effort, we have a baseline for future observations as we continue to study and monitor the relationship of biological and physical processes and their ability to respond to ocean acidification.”

“We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century,” said Sabine. “Because of this effort, we have a baseline for future observations as we continue to study and monitor the relationship of biological and physical processes and their ability to respond to ocean acidification.”

“When the upwelled water was last at the surface, it was exposed to an atmosphere with much less CO2 than today and future upwelled waters will probably be more acidic than today’s because of increasing atmospheric CO2,” said Hales, a professor of chemical oceanography, who is also funded by NASA.

“We don’t know how this will affect species living in the zone below the level of the lowest tides, out to the edge of the continental shelf,” said Ianson, an oceanographer. “We do know that organisms like corals or pteropods are affected by water saturated with CO2. The impacts on other species, such as shellfish and other juvenile fish that have economic significance, are not yet fully understood.”

“In Baja California, we have several Mediterranean-climate coastal lagoons where the main external physical and biogeochemical forcing is from the neighboring coastal ocean, strongly influenced by upwelling,” said Hernandez-Ayon, a coastal oceanographer. “We are concerned about these areas because they play an important role as nurseries and feeding grounds of juvenile fish populations but are also are ideal sites for shellfish aquaculture.” More …

What is Bleaching?

Corals are very sensitive to temperature change: a 1–2º C change in local temperature above their normal summer maximum can lead to a phenomenon called ‘bleaching’, whereby the corals expel their vital algal symbionts (algae which live in the cells of the coral), leaving the coral tissues translucent.

In 1998, a single bleaching event led to the loss of almost 20% of the world’s living coral. Corals can recover from these events but repeated episodes are likely to weaken the coral ecosystem, making them more susceptible to disease and causing a loss of biodiversity. (Source)

How will ocean acidification affect marine life?

Corals, calcareous phytoplankton, mussels, snails, sea urchins and other marine organisms use calcium (Ca) and carbonate (CO3) in seawater to construct their calcium carbonate (CaCO3) shells or skeletons. As the pH decreases, carbonate becomes less available, which makes it more difficult for organisms to secrete CaCO3 to form their skeletal material. For animals in general, including invertebrates and some fish, CO2 accumulation and lowered pH may result in acidosis, or a build up of carbonic acid in the organism’s body fluids. This can lead to lowered immune response, metabolic depression, behavioral depression affecting physical activity and reproduction, and asphyxiation. Since the oceans have never experienced such a rapid acidification, it is not clear if ecosystems have the ability to adapt to these changes (1,2). Effects of ocean acidification on organisms and ecosystems are still poorly understood. Over the last few years, research has intensified significantly to fill the many knowledge gaps. (Source)